


Who else if not me?

by verywhale



Category: Joker (2019)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Dissociation, M/M, Non-Explicit Masturbation, Self-Harm, Selfcest, Slow Burn, Violent and Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-09
Updated: 2020-01-09
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:40:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22032700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/verywhale/pseuds/verywhale
Summary: Arthur Fleck loses the grasp of reality, only to accept his true self.[This FF is some sort of personal exploration (read: headcanon fest) or even paraphrasing of certain scenes in the movie.]
Relationships: Arthur Fleck/Joker (Joker 2019)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 19





	Who else if not me?

**Author's Note:**

> I want to thank @Seven_Meds and @dan_dresdner on twitter as well as dozens of wonderful artists for all the inspiration and more importantly, motivation; so I could finally write this thing down instead of keeping it in my head and being frustrated forever.

The breakdown ceases but the air doesn’t get lighter. “Is it just me, or is it getting crazier out there?” he asks; his voice is still hoarse and recovering.

A small delay, a polite impression of concideration. “It is certainly tense,” she says. “People are upset,” she says in her tired, nonchalant voice.

When Ms. Kane asks ‘How are you?’, Arthur doesn’t reply. Why would she pay any attention to his answer? Why else would she ask this, after what he’d already told her of the beating, the broken sign, the bypassers and their skeptical glances at this scene on the sidewalk? He can’t help but chuckle.

Now she asks about his journal, and Arthur wants to lie that he’s lost or forgotten it. But his startling eyes and neurotic brattle of his feet give him away. He has to open that festering wound to her, while throwing in some pointless little distractions—such as mentions of his pursuits nobody’s bothered about. He waits for Ms. Kane to stumble upon that line he has so demonstratively bolded, as if it’s what he’s wanted all along; waits for her to return that look which pressures him more than the sight of cluttered shelves in this narrow room. She reads it out loud, only to follow up with a long unsettling pause which has led to nothing. The shelves drop on Arthur’s head and flatten him while he’s still conscious. He hardly keeps himself from cracking up with laughter.

He doesn’t look at her either when he quickly mutters something about his medication. He already knows the answer, which is now drilling his nape from the inside. _But Arthur, you are on seven different medications!_

“Arthur, you are on seven different medications.”

It sounds almost as clear as in his head, just without the snicker—her profession still sets its limits on how much she’s allowed not to care. _Surely they must be doing something, huh?_

“Surely they must be doing something.”

He drowns the laughter as this joke becomes too predictable. Arthur must admit he rather likes it in his inner voice, sneering, poking, rolling inside of the skull. At least it doesn’t pretend to be what it’s not.

***

Arthur stands in the middle of Hoyt’s office, hands twisted at the front, eyes fixed at one spot. He has read somewhere that looking behind your boss’ ear helps you to take their berating easier—but sweat keeps dripping down his back and bubbles keep coming up his throat.

“That’s bullshit, that doesn’t even make sense… Just give him his sign back—”

Why did he still hope to hear anything good? His lips start twitching, fingers intertwining back and forth. “Why would I keep his sign?” Arthur asks; his voice is sharp and raucous and his throat stings as if he’s swallowed a handful of shards of broken glass.

“How the fuck would I know, why does anybody do anything?”

Then he says something about his paycheck. About other guys. About the laughter. About the gun—at least Arthur wouldn’t be surprised if he did. Hoyt keeps talking and talking, way too much for someone being kicked in the guts among the rats and fetid masses of garbage. He’s moaning—borderline weeping—as heatedly as he’s kicking. Giant clown shoes turn fully red, and so does his boss’ face and the ground beneath it. Soon he slips and falls nearby in a puddle of blood and endless heaps of trash, his knees now nagging. The blabber finally stops; there are only little steps and echoes of running cars and his forworn breath.

Arthur turns around and leaves the office. After all, he hasn’t left a word more for Hoyt, for his voice has been still too cracked with gulped tears and anger. He tries not to listen to what Hoyt still shouts at him while he’s closing the door, and keep the flat, unconcerned, _happy_ face while he still hears it.

The HaHa’s hallway is as tight as the sidestreet and his coworkers’ obtuse chatter on the back doesn’t differ much from the rats’ squeaks—still as meaningless but rather gruff. They pay no mind to Arthur either, just like the bypassers wouldn’t. But the pulsation in his temples doesn’t stop and he can’t unclench his teeth. Out of all fantasies, however violent and personal, he can’t get any satisfaction from this one, and can’t drop the thought that his daydream has been stolen from him, shown to him with a different man in the focus.

He looks down and discovers that he’s been wearing his normal shoes.

***

Penny closes the door of her room. Arthur slightly tones down the volume of the TV set and takes his new acquest out of the paper bag. It’s cold and heavier than it looks, and its weight almost doubles as he thinks of all possible payments Randall can demand from him.

He reaches for a pack of cigarettes. This is absurd, for Arthur Fleck to own a gun. Arthur is frail and hesitant and always smiles when he wants to scream or cry. Everyone knows that he always holds himself from harming anyone, no matter how he wants to let it out. Would he really point this thing at anyone who hurts him again? It must be another sick dream, since the real Arthur wouldn’t even agree to take the gun.

He inhales the smoke and closes his eyes, but the revolver still lies on the table as he opens them back. His neck gets hot and tacky; he tries to focus on the film—where has he seen that actor before?—but his mind falls back on the same objective. Perhaps Arthur would at least shoot in the air as a warning? How is he even supposed to hold this, what to push or pull? It might look simple to operate, but Arthur wouldn’t trust himself right away. There’s a good reason why a man with afflictions like his isn’t even suitable to get a license—a good reason why he’s not supposed to protest against assaults on his person, to stand up for himself, to be seen and heard, to walk the same road, to breath the same air—

He drops the cigarette in the ashtray and picks up the revolver again. His fingers are slipping, he’s not sure whether it’s too small for both hands. He points at the TV, at the window, at his mother’s armchair, and makes a silly sound mimicking a gunshot—just like little kids do. The saint in the nearest picture also gets a bullet, for all silent judgment he has cast on Arthur when he’s been relaxing on the couch with a palm down his crotch.

The crooked half-smile grows as the weight of the gun and the mind seems to easen. Arthur is right-handed, but the gun finally feels right when his left hand alone holds it, as if it’s coming apart from the rest of Arthur’s body. He catches the rhythm of the song coming from TV, and cocks the hammer at the most satisfying moment. It doesn’t take him long to stand up and start a slow swaying with the music, Arthur’s hand gently holding his left wrist above his head. The drapes are open, but nobody’s watching; the warm light of the lamp is especially charming, and the music takes a more playful tone.

“Hey, what’s your name?”

The unusual confidence in his voice burns Arthur’s ears; he can sense the grin twisting his face. He recognises this voice, now circling in the air instead of banging inside his head. Arthur quickly grabs the heavy wrist again and shyly utters his name. Their dance doesn’t stop, and the grin rises once more while the arms fall. He makes another advance.

“Hey Arthur, you’re a really good dancer!”

Arthur doesn’t stop swinging as he snaps, “I know.” The concern is back and it crawls all along his spine, but he doesn’t let the wrist out—even if he can no longer sense as his own. He even plays along, “You know who’s not?” Now it’s Arthur’s time to laugh. After all, what can his imaginary voice possibly say next that’s—

And the next thing Arthur hears is a deafening bang. He recoils and his body hits the floor, with a smoking gun dragging down his left hand.

***

The sun is still set and the sky is still dull, but the noises outside start rising. Arthur is reading the notes on his pill jars again, for the seventh time as of this night. One’s side effects include extreme loss of appetite; the other’s, nightmares and anxiety. The third is supposed to cancel out these effects while bringing more, potentially more harming; and in Arthur, they all pile one upon another, squab and explode, making him doubt every visit to the therapist and every purchase in the drugstore. The itch to throw the jars out of the window scrambles from the back of his ears, along the neck and to all his limbs, chilling, tingling; the rattle of teeth is as intense as the stomping of feet. But at the last second, Arthur shakes the grin off, forcibly takes the jar with his right hand and slams it on the table with a thud too loud—it makes himself jump in his chair.

He finds himself licking the ash off his fingers since he has smoked the last pack tonight and is now famished. Tomorrow Arthur has to visit Ms. Kane, but he can’t think of what to tell her. His journal is open in front of him, and the crooked smiley face is staring. There’s been a lot of them on these pages, among the naked and headless cutouts, half-scribbled jokes and daily observations he wishes he could forget. But since recently, they’ve grown larger and more ragged, just like the stream of letters he barely remembers writing. The fifth one out of these new jokes also seems funny, he must say, but his upper lip is throbbing again upon rereading it.

That girl from the elevator, Sophie, came to him that night, asking if he’d been following her. Arthur said yes, however confused if it was the right thing to say, if it’d been the right thing to do, if he should’ve apologized or let her in or—but the rest is hazy. His hair was slick back, a useful note from the latest stand-up show. He thinks he said something that made her laugh. He quickly pulled on a sweater he’d been still forgetting to wash. Then he probably invited her on the show he’d planned for a weekend. Acrid cyan lights in the hall were rarely blinking, the neighbours above just stopped fighting, and nobody’d wiped that pool of piss off the corner yet. And Sophie agreed to watch him, at least the remains of memory tell him so. For a second, he cheers up, and for the next, Arthur’s frowning again.

The sky is now gleaming with lilac and magenta and a swipe of pale yellow, and the house block on the opposite side opens its miriads of eyes. He swallows, and the sting of bitter smoky specks in his throat sets him awake. Arthur slams the notebook close and scoffs at himself, at the pill jars and the overfilled ashtray, at the thoughts troubling him all night. Of course the memory fails him, after having so little sleep and ‘forgetting’ to take most of his meds. Of course thinking of Sophie makes his head spin and muscles twitch, it’s not like he often gets attention from women, especially that lovely. He touches his cheeks while putting together tiny pieces of Sophie’s reflection—yes, they get warmer. It all makes sense. And so do the strange scratches in the journal, he tells himself, as playing and writing with your non-dominant hand is quite a harmless way to get rid of boredom. Just boredom, and too much time to kill at these restless nights.

The bullet hole in the wall catches Arthur’s eye as he passes into the kitchen. He can’t help but glance from time to time. Just like his bruises and late arrivals, it stays invisible to his mother. Sometimes he wishes that recalcitrant hand was more persistent and made this hole in his head, freeing it from all burdens. But he tries to shift the focus to his morning routines. Today he performs at the birthday party of some teenage twins, and then in the sick kids’ ward. Laughter is the best medicine, and Arthur breathes this thought in.

His eyebags will be covered with white and blue paint, and even when he can no longer keep a smile, its painted caricature will stay on. The music will play, and Carnival will dance, and the kids can hold both his left and right hand if they want to join. Everyone will love Carnival’s little hat and little voice, and everyone will be happy as long as he’s happy. And if something tries to disturb his happiness, Carnival has a loaded gun waiting behind his belt. But he hopes—he’s sure, it’s just the children’s hospital!—that it will stay where it is, and nothing too bad can possibly happen.

***

Step back, step again, and a twist. Arthur is leading and being led, he tastes metal and smells chlorine and feels new hematomas freezing under his skin. His steps, scuffling but still elegant, ruffling of his crispy shirt, cracking of lamps and trembling breath, yet slowly settling down—all these create and complement a heavy, moaning tune which he’s dancing to. The bathroom is empty, but Arthur’s not alone.

He turns towards the mirror; it’s muddy and there’s graffiti everywhere, but what Arthur sees is clear and acute and it cuts his mind in half. He sees the familiar curls, disheveled, falling on his forehead; a mix of white and blue and red and different red smeared over the familiar features. Long eyebrows still obviously visible through paint, moles on the cheek and the chin, jacked teeth and the scar on the upper lip, now filled with blood—he knows all these, but they don’t belong to Arthur. He wants to wipe them off his face, just like the dirt from the glass. Then he glances over two cigarette burns—he put them on Arthur’s wrist after the gun incident; and they are the only things currently in Arthur’s possession. The rest is nothing but a puzzle with defective pieces that have the right look, but the wrong fit.

Arthur still blinks normally, and this sight stays on the other side of his eyelids, in even more grotesque color and distorted shape. But it makes no muscle move and no sound emerge. Arthur’s numb and helpless and can’t—and doesn’t want to avert his eyes.

“Who are you? What do you want from me? Are you here because I skip my meds?”

“You killed those guys, didn’t you? It’s all your doing, right?!”

“You shot in the wall, you wrote that joke, you talked to Sophie! It was you, I know it!”

“It’s also you who’s always laughing when I don’t want it, it’s all you, you, _you_ —”

Many questions and tantrums run through Arthur’s head and disappear without trace before he voices them. He doesn’t even need answers. He just wants to shout, he wants tears to pop and wounds under his nose to open once more. If only he stepped closer, slammed a mirror with his fist, maybe even broke a faucet—he wouldn’t even mind to laugh into this mimicry of his face. Anything but a silent stare.

This is absurd, for Arthur Fleck to take no action. Arthur is angry and hectic and wants to scream and cry when he laughs—except he cannot even force a half-smile. Arthur cannot make himself to control what he does with his whole body, not just with the hand that holds the gun and writes misshapen notes. And Arthur cannot even make himself to agree that now it makes the most sense.

The dance ends, but the score keeps playing.

***

Tonight it rains, for the first time in a month. Its persistent banging combined with the screams from apartments above, an emotive voice of a news reporter and a demure but distinct melody behind Arthur’s ears irks him unnecessarily, but he can turn off only one of them.

He puts down a cigarette and immediately lights up a new one. The whole room will stay foggy and reeky for way too long and the residues won’t be ever scrubbed off the cloths. But strangely enough, Arthur holds more breath when the air is heavy and toxic and sees more clearly under the blueish veil of smoke.

His mother’s hand mirror on his desk lies upside down; he’s been staring into it but seeing just old exhausted Arthur. The notebook is open and he taps a pen over it. He tries to write, but it falls down from his left hand and only leaves messy strokes which he wants to scribble out. Arthur bites the pen and rolls his eyes, annoyed at the lack of communication from him.

Whatever he is, but he’s hard to catch sometimes. Ms. Kane is gone; funding was cut across the city, she said. He’s thought once that as a professional, she could’ve helped him to determine what’s happening to him these days, but soon enough this idea has been drowned by a wave of laughter. During their last meeting, she didn’t listen as usual, and it only made him chuckle—up until Arthur had realized that it would also leave him with no medication. And next came a strange calm—a bit too familiar at this point. And Arthur didn’t object.

He also laughed while leaving the HaHa’s and planting a little chaos among his coworkers; the clock and exposing Randall among all things. But what Arthur found afterwards was just a stolen marker in his pocket. Without thinking, he licked it and it tasted like a shared memory. _Don’t ~~forget to~~ smile!_ He thought it was really funny, totally something Arthur would do, too.

Later he and mom were watching the news about the subway murders. Arthur was listening carefully, reading from Thomas Wayne’s lips and comparing what he saw to what he heard; and smoking to help himself concentrate. Wayne’s first words came out as discreet only to turn ruthless soon after he and the viewers were shown the faces of unabated protestors. Arthur knew that anger well, although it’s been always hidden under a smile in him.

At that moment, some skinny fingers were also painting a smile on his face, and Arthur’s right wrist was held captive so he couldn’t bring the cigarette to his lips again. A tiny needle was poking underneath his ribs, the artery on his neck, around the nostrils; and his inner voice was dismantling the words coming from the TV set and crafting them into something new, made just for Arthur alone to hear.

“Hey, who are you? … You, _you_ killed these guys, didn’t you? It’s all your doing, riiight? … Of course it was you, I know it… it’s all you, you, _you_ —”

And Arthur also found it funny, and he wished for this building to fall apart and debris to bury him, so nobody could see him sweat and shiver with both dismay and endearment. And it was Arthur’s own smile coming out on his volition.

***

The next morning Arthur is all worked up and doesn’t want to see anybody but one man. Thomas Wayne.

His mother is already awake so he cannot slip away unnoticed today, but he must come to the Wayne Manor tomorrow. He bites the skin around his nails and tears it off until the blood starts running—his punishment for missing the right time to leave.

The bathroom’s door is locked. It’s white and greazy and has too many creaks and it gets on Arthur’s nerves. So does the pale sun arising in the ashen sky, beaming right into his wincing eyes; and the stained oilcloth curtains, and that ridiculous puffy toilet seat cover, and that useless vase with fake flowers standing on the bathtub’s edge for no reason. But the most annoying presense of today must be him.

Arthur is shaving with his back facing the mirror; he knows that he’s staring now. After he'd read the letter, he lost the memory of the evening spent at the Pogo’s, with Sophie; and nothing but contents of the letter mattered to him anymore. And when Arthur needs to be alone, recurring his mother’s words and planning conversations in his head, he still feels his every move and word and thought being observed and snatched from behind his shoulder.

Here comes a new distraction. Arthur thought of that time when he saw himself smashing the window of the drugstore, pointing his gun at the apothecary and forcing her to bring him the meds he needed—particularly that one that helped to get rid of hallucinations. He even reached the revolver when he stood in front of the blinking neon sign. But he did so with the right hand, while the left was clenched inside the pocket of his hoodie and refused to get out. The apothecary returned home safe.

The skin hisses and reddens at the spot where the razor has slipped. When Arthur must be thinking of Thomas Wayne, his mind is captured by that thing—creature—person—illusion—which has broken Arthur’s face and voice apart and rejoined their shards all in wrong places. He licks his finger and swipes it against the cut, but the skin is now blazing and he does it again and again. He hears a short cackle.

“Shut the fuck up,” Arthur mumbles, sucking off the blood from his finger. Sharp miniscule hairs get stuck to his tongue and he scrapes them off with his teeth. “I know you aren’t real.” He imagines how he spits them into his cocky face, but it doesn’t lift his mood even a little bit. Maybe on the way to the Wayne Manor he can find another drugstore, hopefully not any more expensive. He will just need to practice to use the gun with the right hand.

“You aren’t real, you hear me?” Arthur says, still resisting the urge to turn to the mirror. “There’s no place for you. I will have what I need from my mo—” He makes another cut, but this time he just clicks his tongue and lets the thin blood stream run. “—from my parents. Some real feelings, but you wouldn’t know that.” he says, and these words leave a tart aftertaste. Will there be more giggles, more mockery?

Arthur knows that now his face is a mess of shaved off hairs, foam and bleeding gashes, but he keeps avoiding the meeting. He wears nothing but briefs, and the exposure of both his psyche and body to the guise in the mirror makes him feel twice as cold and uncomfortable.

“Why are you still here? I have something more serious to think about!”

His cry is muffled by the towel, but he has heard Arthur clearly. It would be just half the trouble if he only lived in reflections or on the notebook’s pages—but Arthur isn’t sure if there’s any place free from his presence; and he’s tangled with a thorny thread of terror. He still presses the towel to his face—and now he covers his whole head with it. Maybe if he stuffs it down his ears, eyes and mouth, he will cut him off his senses; maybe if he smothers himself with this towel, they will never hear or see or feel each other again.

“Is it what you want? Why does everyone only want to hurt me?”

It gets harder to breathe. As Arthur cannot see or hear anything, the sensations become stronger and drum more rapidly. The ringing in his head has no sound but it echoes through his body, now trembling. His toes are crawling into the thin stiff carpet and its fibers are sharp but—unfortunately—not enough to slice the skin. Arthur’s freezing, and warm palms laying on his shoulders feel like two candent irons.

But he doesn’t shrivel at this intimacy. One hand now rests on that protruding shoulder blade, while the other runs down his spine, counting each vertebrae. He shushes himself before he leaves out a single groan or whimper. To every little touch, he responds with a slight tilt of his head, and his lips stretch out; these pats and strokes are like the raindrops and they are soft and soothing and he craves more.

But then he startles as the world again flashes white and screams loud but stays as painful when it's been mute and devoid of any image. Arthur remembers who these hands belong to, and hundreds of fears jam him like a violent mob. His eyes slink, he _dares_ to glance in the mirror, but there’s just his emaciated, tangible, erratic real self. Chilling spikes around his throat are at their deepest, and the air he hunts for only comes out of the punctures they’ve left. The towel is on the floor, and it’s full of red dots; and frantic sounds coming from his mouth don’t resemble coughing, crying or even laughing.

“Happy! Who are you talking to?” His mother is calling for him, or he thinks she’s calling, imagines what she would say if she heard these indefinable noises. “Why are you here for so long? What’s wrong? You need help?”

It’s just the hissing and gasping and silent weeping now. No, no way she said the last two things, but he would do anything to hear them from her—

***

He doesn’t remember the last time he was at home without his mother around. Arthur falls onto her tidy bed, hoodie and shoes still on, spreading his limbs as wide as he can to take the most space. It’s niggling and almost blasphemous, but this is what he’s yearned for since his early teens. And it’s not the wildest thought passing through his head today, leaving red wheel marks on his cheeks.

A clown nose rolls out of his pocket. Arthur grabs it without looking and palpates it, even though every movement of his fingers forms a lump inside him. The lump so high in his throat, not quite under the ear—it’s little Bruce Wayne and his face so stoic that Arthur urges to _draw_ a smile on it, at least. Another one, big and sticky, blocking his breathing—a brash chuckle from the Waynes’ butler when Arthur says that Thomas is his— it’s a new lump, right on the root of his tongue. He throws the nose at the wall.

Arthur drops a pillow on his head. Where did Sophie disappear after she'd gone to get coffee? He would use a cup right now, but not to drink—to rinse his ears and nostrils with it. How did Murray get that video anyway—why does the Pogo’s even record its performers? “My mother would always say—”, “always say”; this “always” is like a typo which he's scribbled out but still can see, he doesn’t remember saying it on the stage.

The pillow smells like shampoo and processed food and sickness, and he wants to take a bite of it. So, Hoyt still keeps his condition cards for some reason, probably to have a laugh after another tedious day flat on his ass in the office. “A clown thing,” that policeman said. Arthur said his mom didn’t take medication, but they would find the traces in her blood, wouldn’t they? The jars still have his name on them. He should’ve practiced more for the show, he knows it. He was too worried about the mirror—

If the nose is here, then where is the magic wand, the flowers? The idea that he’s thrown them in the trash while returning home sounds plausible, apart from one detail—he’s sure he’s left the home empty-handed. Would little Bruce at least laugh at him bumping into a glass door? Who knows what kids find funny these days—

Too many objects and ideas and questions race in his head. They clog and clot, and unraveling them would only leave him in an empty space, a burned out desert where his brain would dry out and crumble. And on top of that, this race is unusually silent, like a muted television showing grotesque crime news and indecent movies at nighttime. Mom is away, but the habit stays.

Arthur frowns. It must be the morning, the busiest time of the day, but there’s no honking and yelling outside, no baby cries, no barking, no coffee spilling and mugs shattering. Even the clock doesn’t seem to be ticking. The radio and the TV in the room are also off, and he would turn them both on, but that would tear the scab off his memory of the Murray Franklin show. He presses his hands against the pillow, right where his nose is.

“A bit boring without music, don’t ya think?”

_Oh, he talks now_. Spending a whole week teasing and tormenting Arthur so ruthlessly, only to raise his voice now as if nothing has happened. As if it’s totally normal to talk to your reflection, hallucination, split personality, a strange stalker?— _whatever_ he is. Yet for everything has occured within the hours still fresh in mind, it’s far from the worst.

“Has anyone told you that you have a good taste in music?”

He decorates Arthur’s voice with a higher pitch and a tint of flamboyance, something he could’ve borrowed for his stand-ups. “Not so much in TV shows though, their jokes get stale too quickly.” He doesn’t mumble, each of his words comes off as distinct; but he often finishes them with a little laugh.

Arthur skews his sight to the left where the talking comes from, but still cannot catch his silhouette. He’s now lying like a pole—arms to sides, legs brought together; and the pillow still on top.

Arthur gulps and asks, “Why did you touch me yesterday morning?”

His humming is loud but short. “Hmm, dunno… Well, no, I _do_ know…” He chews and degusts the next words before spitting. “I figured that you wanted some warmth and some hug, so I did it.”

Arthur’s meek short laugh forms a tinge of disbelief but also of raising abashment. _That’s why you are talking now, too_ , a reply to his own question which he’s forgotten to bring up. Such a company would be too bizarre to bring a sense of comfort, but it’s too tiresome to lie to yourself anymore.

“You didn’t like it?” he asks. Arthur just scoffs.

“Why do you ask if you know the answer?”

“Okay, I know, I know that my hands aren’t that smooth and tender as you wish… And I’m no cute girl either, so… But maybe, just maybe!—if you wash them more often and stop biting your nails, you would like it more!”

“What the fuck are you talking abou—”

Arthur breaks the sentence with laughter. He grasps the pillow with his arms, squeezing it and blocking the view, leaving only the room for laughter. He wouldn’t be able to stop it if he tried, but there’s no pain or pretense in it; such a rare occasion that it even plants a seed of doubt. But before the growth of confusion silences him, more laughter, close to identical, resounds on the right side of his. Arthur has no choice but to follow it up again. He neither knows or cares for how long it has lasted.

Arthur puts his arms off, carefully, so the pillow stays on. He finds his hands touching each other. “If I put this thing away, will you leave like you always do?” he asks.

He takes a little pause, but his reply sounds confident. “Naaah, I will stay.”

Arthur decides to keep it. His heavy hot breath reflects from the cloth onto his face. One upon another, numerous questions stack in his head and he’s unsure which one to pick without demolishing the rest. His legs start to tremble.

“Are you so curious about me, that you only ask me stuff?” He talks first again, still as playful and irritating.

“Well, you already know everything about me, so I also want to—”

“Ah-ah-ah-ah! You know more about me than you think you do!”

Arthur almost jumps in a flurry. “Did you just wave your finger at me?”

“See? I’ve told you!”

His voice follows a certain rhythm, shared just between two of them, and he has that pesky habit—interrupting his companion. Must’ve learned it from other people talking over him, either as an imitation or retribution. Arthur sighs and doesn’t say anything.

“You have plans for the evening?” he asks. “Maybe we could watch some TV later.”

“I don’t want to,” Arthur says. “Didn’t you just say you don’t like television?”

“Noooo, I said I don’t like this talk show you watch all the time. Anyway, you have other channels to watch! Like the news channel, they drop the best jokes there, just killing it! I’m sure something interesting is gonna happen tonight.”

Curiosity and hopeless persuation— _he’s just fucking with you, don’t believe him, why would you_ —get in a loud argument and only one can come out alive. A sharp wire of concern tightens around Arthur’s forehead. He shoves his palm under the pillow and traces his lips, even if he doesn’t know why.

“Don’t tell me that you can see the future.” Lame and battered, but curiosity stands victorious.

“No-no, I can only do the same as you.”

His eyelashes ruffle against the cloth, and the wind whistles and the clock resumes its monotone. The city revives, and something clicks in Arthur’s head that makes him freeze with titled eyebrows and pouted lips. Nothing in him moves apart from his eyes. They flounce to the left, to the right, to the top, to the bottom, _hoping_ to bump into something odd.

Arthur takes a loud breath, and within a second tosses the pillow and rolls on the side, standing up on his elbow. “Who are you, anyway?”

But he lied. He didn’t stay.

***

The night is silent so the music of memory replays itself. There were enraged shouts, calls for violence and cheering when the policemen had taken the bait. Arthur still doesn’t know what these demands were for, but if the protestors knew his name, they would exclaim it too, with pride and hopefulness. He recalls that this idea made him smile.

A cheerful tone accompanied a silly dance on the roller skates, and everyone was laughing. It was an old, everyone’s favorite movie Arthur had been always missing to see up until yesterday. It didn’t matter, however—it’s not what he'd crawled in there for. But neither was that row of punches right into his heart, that nonsensical parade of accusations and lies and namecalling, all from a man he hoped to be his f— And he didn’t even listen to what Arthur had to say, didn’t want to; and the revolt outside also wasn’t distracting him from enjoying a picture on a big screen.

Arthur doesn’t have the energy to be angry, to be honest—he left it all in the theater’s bathroom behind Thomas Wayne’s back, in a drop of nosebleed on a perfectly polished sink. All he’s left to do is to drill each piece of furnishing in his kitchen with his wet, sleepless, deranged eyes. And to laugh from time to time, of course.

He pulls out a random drawer and finds a large knife among the mess of utensils. He drops it vertically on his foot which he quickly moves off—almost involuntary—before the knife sticks into it. He must’ve seen it in some movie, or in some dream. The blade makes funny popping sounds when it pierces the floorcloth, and Arthur smiles at them once, twice, even if it’s just for a millisecond.

His hand is sloppy, he hurries too much and the knife falls flat. Arthur tosses it away with a foot swipe so fierce, that he half-spins and slips. His nape meets the corner of the table, and the stained, ugly cyan kitchen blooms with a splash of crimson, with thick muddy pink and crispy bitty white scattered around; and with a loud crack the cacophony of the night loses one of its components, the hoarse and unsteady one. This scene, abrupt and mesmerizing in its bareness, has too much beauty to exist in our world, so Arthur makes it up while his left hand freezes on the tabletop, stopping him from falling.

He groans and straightens up, now shoving the fingers on this damned hand down his mouth, one by one. They are sticky and the intoxicating smell of greaze and ink makes Arthur jab his teeth deeper into the skin, until he can taste blood and his own meat and swallow them whole and—he gags and bends in half with a bitter cough.

The root of his tongue is wildly pulsating and saliva drips down his chin and he wipes it off. There are just scarce red marks on his phalanges. It’s really funny, so Arthur just wanders around the kitchen, cackling quietly. The telephone ringing is funny right now, too.

He’s staring at the floor, his hair drooping and tunneling the view; and then at the fridge. The receiver beeps. The caller has a familiar voice, he tells his name but Arthur doesn’t care to remember who he is. The next second he’s tearing and gutting the fridge, as if it was himself. Its organs are spread all over the floor and the fridge is bare open, like a cocoon welcoming an imago that has just shed her broken useless wings, to revert the cycle and sleep forever. He creeps inside and the door shuts close.

It’s tight and dark and cold and the world around him growls and vibrates, and Arthur vibrates with it. His forehead is pressed to his knees, arms encircle them; and he shivers and stomps his toes and taps his fingers and clatters his teeth. The noises grow and charge until they reach the critical point and everything breaks and shuts down. If simply closing the eyes and covering the head with a blanket doesn’t invite sleep, he will force himself into hibernation; so at long last, he will gain his rest—from neverending news, from garbage lying on the streets, walking on the streets, from the empty black hole in his head that keeps sucking everything in—

A new voice steps in and leads the others; it drums on the door, interchanging long pauses with blasting sessions. Ridiculous. Arthur hisses and crams his head between his thighs. He knows who’s doing it.

“Leave me alone.”

He hears it perfectly, but doesn’t think of stopping. “Open the door,” he says; at the same time, he’s outside the fridge, inside of it and inside of Arthur. His jammed heart is shrinking and losing its shape and beat, and his right wrist is burning from the nails digging through the skin.

“Heeey, y’know what’s the difference between you and a penguin? When it’s freezing cold, only one of you can still survive while naked!”

Arthur doesn’t laugh. “Open it yourself or fuck off.”

He drops the knocking, but it’s too early to breath with relief. Louder than the buzzing engine, his shoes are thrumming and shuffling on the linoleum, slower and more tenacious with every beat. Then they leave a screech, subdued but prolonged—and the ceiling of Arthur’s narrow chill world quakes, and the walls rattle and crash against themselves, and he squeaks and jumps and bangs his head against a lattice shelf he’s decided to leave here at the last second. There’s no room to raise his arms and touch the bump, but he must, he must make sure it’s here, he’s here, he’s still here—so Arthur grabs his face and groans as he desperately tries to tear it off.

Now sitting freely on the top of the icebox, he lightly taps his heel against the door.

“Get off!” Whether Arthur had really said it or not, it reached its destination, but was just as ignored as everything Arthur had ever said.

“I thought the other day…” The calm in his tone is viscid and unbearable. “Why aren’t you looking for a new job? Mom’s treatment will cost you a good sum, y’know, and you still have to buy cigarettes somehow.”

These knocks are soft and rare, but still follow some rhythm that doesn’t match the buzzing of the machine or the beat of the heart. Arthur’s teeth are bare and he forgets to blink; he slaps his palm against the door as if there is a large annoying fly.

“Stop banging.” His voice is too low and nearly throttled from cold and spite. “Stop talking.”

“Hey, I know! You could sell your Murray stuff. The collectors would love to give you a lot for these old cassettes, they are crazy like that. You won’t be needing them anymore, right?”

“Stop talking—”

“And you still remember Randall too, right? Ah… Honestly, I’m waiting for him to bring his ass over here and ask what you ‘owed’ him for that gun… Telling the same old tales, _you know me, you are my boy, we can always rely on each other_ —” He retches—too comically, too tastelessly, like in those slapstick cartoons—it’s not funny—and neither is this knocking, talking, messing with him for whatever reason—

“Shut— _shut up_ —”

“It’s all about money again!” he yelps and creates miriads of echoes. “Thomas Wayne has money, and so what? All these guys on the streets want his head on a stick. They wish they could be you in that subway— they love you. They don’t know who you really are, but they love you.”

“S- _shut the fuck up_ —”

“You need to show them who you are! But change this hoodie for once, it needs a wash anyway. You’ll be more visible if you wear something flashy, like that suit from the Pogo’s. And don’t forget to put on a happy fa—”

A white portal slams open, fueled by a flash of exasperation; and on such speed Arthur cannot land on his open palms and immediately falls down on his face—not happy, not angry, not sad anymore.

There’s too much space now; empty, full of revelations he doesn’t want to acknowledge yet. Arthur crawls out of the fridge on the verge of his dying will. He still couldn’t catch him, he’s gone again once the goal of his ridicule is achieved—Arthur is lying exposed, limbs spread wide, and his cocoon no longer suitable to hide in. He uses his last gasps to lift his head and drop it again, so the interiors turn on the side and keep sliding, descending, until they disappear and crash somewhere behind his perception. This crash sounds just like some sick laughter.

“Oh, was that joke about a happy face not funny? But do not worry—I’m gonna put one on mine to spare your from it.”

One after another come two soft thuds; and brown shoes and white socks flash nearby. He doesn’t cast a shadow— _ah, of course he doesn’t_. His ankles are skinny, and Arthur stretches out his arm hoping to grab and break one, to break him apart and see what he really is; but his arm drops on the floor, lifeless, like a punctured balloon.

“W-why were you hiding from me for _ssso looong_ —” Arthur’s voice is thawing, wobbling; he cannot raise his head to see the full form of his—his tormentor, the remains of his fractured mind. He glares at these ankles and the lack of shadow and lack of ground underneath, and at this hollow, burned down space where only he alone exists.

He slowly picks Arthur up, throwing his arm over the shoulder and spreading the spidery fingers to hold him by the side. He meets no objection—Arthur is limp and his chagrin ate him from inside. All he can do now is to stare.

He still exists in mismatched pieces. His hair is slick back and has a weird color, however indistinguishable in the gloomy set of the night. Arthur expects him to be smiling, but he really isn’t. His touch is strangely cold, and his hands, wrapped in green and red, have the same dirty bitten nails and the same burns—his burns! If anything was left alive in Arthur’s body, he would feel his innards shrink and sear and turn to coal and ash.

“W-wh- _who the fuck are you_ —”

But there’s no more strength in Arthur’s voice, and no more questions. He closes his eyes and lets himself being dragged somewhere, dropped somewhere, even if it’s in the middle of the void.

***

The sunlight lazily wades into the room and leaves washed out stains on the walls and the appointments. The bed, normally cozy, is now rigid and tacky, but this unnerving sense of filth is still not enough to push one out. There are more other unnerving feelings.

The weight of dizziness falls on the eyelids, but they can be kept closed no longer. The lips are stuck to each other so the dried flesh is about to flay upon unlinking them. Arthur gasps for empty air and starts coughing. He sees the pale warm light but can’t figure out whether it’s the morning, the afternoon, what day and year and lifetime it is and how much time has passed while he’s been sleeping. He wipes the sweat off his—still his—face, only to wipe off tar, now dripping off his palms. A mawkish taste overfills his mouth and he urges to clean it off with his tongue and spew it out. Arthur is laying with a blanket curled around his tingling legs, in a red knit shirt which he doesn’t recall putting on. Wherever he turns, however he repositions, it doesn’t get more comfortable; the nagging numbness still chains his joints, and the arm around his torso and the hand on his throat don’t go away.

Typically Arthur would wait forever, but this time he grabs that hand and brashly moves it away. It doesn’t get easier to breath, so he continues coughing, and his eyes hastily search the nightstand for a little red box. He hears a quiet annoyed snicker, and now there’s a second clasp squeezing his body and the heft of ribs, limbs and leers pins him to the sweat-drenched bed.

“Maybe instead of fooling around, you could pass me the cigarettes?” Arthur mutters through the bedsheets, not bothered standing up and shaking him off. For a moment he’s even felt at rest. “Or at least tell me how long I’ve been sleeping.”

A lambent image of Arthur twirling and suffocating in sleep, while still embraced and followed in every movement, has slid through his head. When it disappears, the outlines keep pulsating, and Arthur has to shoo him away from palming off these provoking thoughts.

“Fooling around is my job,” he says and leans towards the nightstand, although the grasp doesn’t seem to loosen. “And you slept exactly for fifty-two hours, eleven minutes and forty-four seconds, not counting all those seconds when you were suddenly waking up screaming and scaring me. Nightmares, I suppose?”

A giggle leaves Arthur’s mouth and he rolls on his back, now freed, with an elbow covering his sight. He cannot remember anything between falling into deep slumber and surfacing from it in this faded room, with a strange kick in his mouth and strange hands around his body. No black holes and abandoned roads, no dire forgotten memories reviving themselves in the dreamscape, not even the harrowing emptiness. The moment he’s fallen asleep blends with the one when he’s been already awake.

He moves his elbow and the green block stands out of darkness, and he rushes towards it and grabs its collar; his eyes dazed, vessels popping, breath bolting ahead of the heartbeat, teeth clutched so firmly that the throes from their roots run through the skull. He doesn’t leave, doesn’t hide, he’s still here—

“Is something wrong with my face?” he asks, almost unamused, almost successful at hiding the farce. “You don’t like that I took this shirt? I’m sorry, but you weren’t wearing it, so— Your cigarettes, by the way—”

Arthur places his fingers on his cheek and clamps and stretches it. He expects it to overextend in a cartoonish way, like a dough—or just any muscle to twitch or any eye to blink. He remembers this silly shirt, indeed; he bought it about a year ago in case of some festivities, and then it turned into another trinket for their wretched living room. He didn’t even take off the plastic wrap.

He doesn’t seem to be breathing. Arthur is staring in an attempt to read the shapes and features under the thick layers of pigments, and it pains his eyes as much as shoving burning stubs into them. Still as derisively calm, he waves a pack and a lighter in front of Arthur. He takes out a cigarette with his mouth and makes a quick flash, and Arthur is fast to recognize another taunt in this move as his hunger grows and he gets distracted by the coils of smoke.

While he’s been watching the faint blue reeling around him, a soft filter tip has slipped into his mouth from the familiar knuckles—unawares it has taken him, so he has to catch the cigarette with both hands before it would fall and burn the whole place down. Trying to settle it between his lips, Arthur inhales more smoke than he usually does. The foil crinkles again, another flash of the lighter strikes after two of its coughs, then comes a thump of thrown cardboard—many, many little thumps and rolling sounds.

A little tap on the pillow—he invites Arthur to lie next to him. Arthur looks into him like into the trembling water. The smoke is like acid and he feasts on it, still hasn’t let the cigarette out of his mouth for a second; it dissolves the stale aftertaste of excess sleep and seizing headache and anxiety. But he stays where he is, with his two rouged smiles, leaving some room on his right side for Arthur. And so he sluggishly shifts on his bottom across the bed and lets himself slope—as intoxicated as he might be, he can’t come up with any better thing to do. The brittle bones which Arthur slumps onto are about to thrust into his side and cut him open, but he’s too high on nicotine and swelter and this exceptional, almost verboten closeness.

“Look who’s smiling,” he says; his high pitch adds extra spice to that heady mixture of passive pleasures. “I agree that it’s really funny.” He knows that Arthur bears no mind to his jests anymore.

“Let me go back on that topic… we haven’t finished.”

For once, he’s left dumbfounded. The residue of their starting dialogue steps out of the foggy air. Arthur’s been contemplating his upcoming phrase for a while and still isn’t sure how awkward it sounds.

“So, if I had any nightmares, I would remember them.” He doesn’t like it after all.

“Oh, don’t you know how many of them you forgot right after seeing them,” he laughs and blows the smoke onto Arthur’s hair. “And not just nightmares— If you only knew how yummy they are. I’d open your head like a pot,” he tousles Arthur’s curls and grabs and pulls them gently, “and eat straight from it, _everything_ I can find in there!”

Arthur ignores the gripe on his scalp—how weirdly stirring it is—and turns to his left. The blue diamonds around his eyes are slouchy, asymmetrical. One of them nearly touches the higher eyebrow and then drools along the cheek, reaching the indelible red smile which no longer has a black outline—in a sloppy, pathetic, painfully sincere way. His eyelashes are also greased with white paint and stick to each other in outer corners. It looks like it has always been there, it looks _natural_ —this word doesn’t seem fitting for describing such a gaudy image, but Arthur likes it and he likes this makeup.

Arthur shakes his head to get out of the web of fingers. It’s not a hard task; he doesn’t insist on anything. The ghostly pat runs over his hair and causes the same response as the trap itself which he has left; the same confusion and thrill.

“So, if we are so close now, that you can even eat the insides of my head,” he says almost mockingly, “will you finally tell me _who are you_?”

He groans and digs his fingers into Arthur’s hair again. “Come on, do you not know that if you keep telling the same joke, it stops being funny?”

He goes up along the nape, and a long spasm on Arthur’s back makes him stop—just for a second, to have a chuckle. He brushes his scalp again, then slightly leans to the left. He watches Arthur tap his fingers over his lips, wave his shoulder in futile hopes that it will cease doing so by itself—what a charming sight. His hand crawls down to the clammy neck and hugs it tightly, and Arthur’s little unsteady breaths become louder.

“What are you doing?..” he asks; his words rather come out like timid flares of laughter, and he cannot mask the popping smile. The claw around his neck doesn’t move, but chaotic pulsations dash from it and fan out on varying lengths. His entire body starts convulsing. Nothing but an orange tip is left from his cigarette, and with no aim, Arthur shoots it away at the same time when the collar of his shirt moves aside. His collarbone is exposed and hot fingertips start sliding over it back and forth. Arthur twists his legs and buries his face into the opposite side of the shirt—it’s ticklish and sultry and he doesn’t recognize the drive behind his sizzling laughs.

“You don’t like it? Want me to stop?” he asks. He puts his cigarette, just half-done yet, between Arthur’s knuckles. He doesn’t say anything else as he carefully drifts higher from the collarbone. The thumb is behind the ear, the index finger is on the mouth—throbbing and spurting with half-gasps, half-laughs—and the other three cling to his chin. He slowly lifts and pulls Arthur’s head out of its hide. They look at each other in haze; Arthur’s eyes are half-closed, lashes flutter, but they aren’t wet.

Ash crumbles and dusts the bed, fever veils the room. There’s no haste. He can wait for as long as needed, for as long as it will take Arthur to run out of laughs. And while he’s patient, he allows Arthur’s chin to slip from the remains of his clasp and his head to drop on his chest. It doesn’t bring him rest. He pushes his hand through the collar, and Arthur squints almost painfully. It tickles even more; and Arthur is overwhelmed, overheated with the sounds he makes, with mellow aching in his throat, his stomach and many other places. He rubs and ruffles and scratches past scarce hairs, seeks, patiently seeks for a moment of exhaustion. For anything other than what seems to be too lascivious for laughter and too merry for moaning.

Even through the mist, Arthur can read his thoughts—for the first time, he recalls. Whether it’s embarassment, or startling fear, or coy contentment, he waits for Arthur to say it to himself. To hear his own voice—not the bold and collapsing, but that one which is humble and dainty and tips and trips over itself; to hear it telling the truth. He knows all possible words Arthur will form his answer from, he just wants him to take them out and make them corporal.

He gets tired—of shredding his lungs and killing his own ears, but not of taut and weird sensations stuffing the emptiness in his psyche. He gets tired of being a blank space. Arthur coughs and takes deep breaths; he still doesn’t look he’s getting any rest or that he even aims for it. The hand caressing his chest also stays on its place while the second one reaches somewhere lower. It’s getting hotter.

“Do you want me to stop?” he repeats.

Arthur draws a cigarette to his mouth and makes a small inhale. His head is free from intents and fake smiles and bad ruses designed for himself. A thin thread connecting the answer to the chasm of his mind tears and dissipates, and a short simple phrase drops on his tongue. It’s faint, flavorless, yet anything but unpleasant.

“I don’t,” Arthur says.

***

It’s like a seething waterfall, like a tameless forest fire; he laughs. He laughs like for the last time; it rends and maims him until only the flinders of his mind lay scattered in dead darkness. Sirens bewail, someone screams at him through the wall. He weeps with laughter.

The file of Penny Fleck lies about somewhere in the anteroom, among wet clothes he’s shed like an old, fake skin. What would he give up to erase that event from the memory of his, just like the decades documented on those worn off pages? No idea comes up to him, as he has nothing to offer. How would he even know if it’s not another ruse? He knows nothing, has nothing, is noth—it gets too funny. He almost chokes.

“Drop that nonsense, Arthur. You know who you are.”

Arthur lights a cigarette but it no longer helps; no cloak can hide this engorged keening wound. He falls onto pillows, shabby armrests, a coffee table at the front. He can sense them, feel that they exist and belong to the world, but not that he belongs to it.

“Arthur? You hear me?”

He slams his palm against the table; he does it again and again, wishing that it was that ugly, vain, disgusting mask with a name of Arthur Fleck attached to it. He only hears the void growing and calling for him right where the laughter escapes him. Its voice is shrill and persistent and too distinct.

“Are you… going to take my place?” How is he talking, if his tongue, his windpipe and his lungs are already fractured? He doesn’t know. “To eat me like you ate my memories?”

“No-no, you aren’t going anywhere, Arthur.”

Once more he hears this name, it doesn’t pierce his ears that deeply. Doubts and concerns weave into even bigger knots and the laughter emerges as feeble gasps. There’s still a cigarette smoldering uselessly between his knuckles, so he thrusts it into his chest, twirls and squashes it until it crumbles completely. When the filter tip is crushed, it’s just his own fingers shoving themselves into the wound, deranging this pumping blister and digging for deeper feelings. He’s been anticipating the bite of heat, the brittle hiss raising in his mouth, a throe that blazes and fades as he’s burning himself away. But nothing’s happening and fear throttles him.

“Will you kill me?” A question as simple as a swift slice on neck vessels. Something kicks him out of nowhere—he should’ve asked, _did you kill me? am I in hell? am I in agony and it’s my delusion? since when I've been dead?_ —but all is worthless, worthless little buzzing. He’s heard it all anyway.

“Who do you think I am, some kind of monster?”

He doesn’t know. Doesn’t know what to think, what to say, what to believe. “Then what do you want from me?!” he screams and slips from the couch and his head knocks against the floor. He can’t find anything better to do than to crawl a bit further from the table and keep knocking it.

With each bump, the dull echoes of pain become sharper. A frame of Sophie, smiling friendly or shaken with dread, stands in front of him and he understands it’s not real. A shape of his mother, lying under glazed hospital lights and talking in her sleep to a man who tells her of traumas on the body of her child; it’s not real either. A thought of dropping a pillow on her face and jumping on it races nearby and it sounds funny. Maybe he’s done it already. And those three guys in the subway, with their glossy hair and ironed suits and wicked grins and beautiful, beautiful gaping holes from which their lives startle away—all made up, imagined. A corner of Arthur’s mouth starts twitching.

“I know who you are. I know…”

His head spins and his insides bowl, begging him to stop. Arthur rolls on his right side and the bottom of his back meets the footing of the couch. Until then, he hasn’t realized how wet and tacky his back is. He shifts a little forward so it sticks off—and he feels it itching. He bends his left arm around the neck and starts scratching the sweat and skin and meat off his shoulder blade. More memories and senses are exposed and they throb and gleam.

Mirrors, those dirty liars. Why did they have to scare him like that? A new green shirt, it looks so good on him. A thick notebook, full of scribbles and figures, of jokes nobody has laughed at. So messy and gross, this writing is, and Arthur clearly follows the hand that smears the pages with it—both of these hands. They are real, and now they hug and flay him. Like that time on his mother’s bed, with them touching him wherever he wanted, wherever it made him pant, made him seethe in pain and shed blissful moans and tears—it was just as real. The burning is sweet, on the back and in the head alike— _it mustn’t be_ , it must alarm, disturb, or paralyze!—but Arthur revels in this culmination and lets it fill his mouth and nostrils and drown him.

“Of course… of course…” Arthur chants as he continues scratching. Sweat drips off his face and neck and it’s thick like paint. Festive, lustrous paint; and the fingers on his right hand are brushes. As the hollow skull gets flooded, correct answers resurface. “Who are you?” the voice asks calmly; that voice which everyone has been heard before—be that his mother, his therapist, Thomas Wayne, Murray’s secretary or kids from the sidestreet. All those people who’ve never really seen him.

“Just the real you,” says the same voice; tremulous, shattering, but nonetheless the same. The one which he’s not going to hide anymore. “Who else can it be?”

Nagging, the perfect round sore on his chest reappears suddenly. Arthur looks at his left hand before his teeth gouge it. The skin whines and hoots, and Arthur feasts on this feeling, too. A smile steps out of the colored canvas where his mask has been, as he gnaws and drools.

He’s scrapped off his normal, forged happy face and is soon to put on a new one. And for once in his life, it actually makes him happy.


End file.
